To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make both long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug-out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in your e-mailed letters. We post many of those — or excerpts thereof — in the Odds ‘n Sods Column or in the Snippets column. Let’s keep busy and be ready!
Jim Reports:
Lily helped me load up our two horizontal beehives on our electric UATV, so that I could haul them to our shop for winter storage.
I set up three hoop greenhouses for our winter garden.
I helped a consulting client move a large quantity of long-term storage food.
Now, Lily’s part of the report…
Avalanche Lily Reports:
Dear Readers:
The weather has been clear and beautiful with a high of seventy-degrees Fahrenheit and a low of twenty-eight degrees.
This past week, I plucked and dried Jacob bean pods from the vines, put them in a pillow case and jumped all over the pillow case to thresh the beans from the pods. Then I winnowed the chaff from them in front of a fan. I harvested a quart of the beans. They will be planted next summer in the garden for a larger crop.
I stripped fronds and flowers from dill plants that I air dried for a few weeks. I collected a half gallons worth.
I washed and froze more box ripened tomatoes.
I cleaned the hen house.
Jim put in the stakes and the PVC pipe hoops over the Winter garden. I watered the winter garden heavily and then put the plastic on over the hoops just in time for the hard frost.
Again this year, the bees that we bought early in the spring swarmed and left the hives. They swarmed the day we had a guest over to kayak our river with us. We saw them swarming but I was too preoccupied to do anything about it. I wasn’t exactly sure that they were swarming, but now I know without a doubt what it looks like. They did not leave us any honey this year! Therefore, to keep the hives safe for weathering and from bear depredation, we brought them up to store in the shop.
The fact of the matter is that I am getting a older and I cannot do everything anymore and be successful. We also did not get to processing the bull calf hide and had to dump it. We are out of room in our freezers. One of our freezers needs some maintenance and we hope when that is done to fill it with venison. We “win some and we lose some”, as Jim said about the hide. We are entering the age of older Preppers. We have to deal with fading health and issues and such. Time to reduce our workload and cut ourselves some slack.
We cleaned the house this week.
May You All Remain Safe, Blessed, and Hidden in Christ Jesus,
– Avalanche Lily, Rawles
o o o
As always, please share and send e-mails of your own successes and hard-earned wisdom and we will post them in the “Snippets” column this coming week. We want to hear from you.